Control is a funny thing. It isn't scorned, like the other vices. It's absence is actually chastised. "If only you were more disciplined", they say. But never "oh please, just do whatever you feel like." 
No, it's always, "If only you had more self control". 


Oh yes. Control yourself. Bring about the wanted response. Or action. Or result. Choke it. Reign it. Master it. Assert your will.

 
I have people in my life that are control freaks. I am painfully aware of them because I myself am the exact same way. Annoyingly, the people who irritate me the most are the ones who's shortcomings are too close for comfort to my own. There is one in particular who gets under my skin, and when I look at his life I see myself. 

He controls his kingdom. His little bitty, tiny kingdom, the one that has an occupancy of one. Because sooner or later, you find you can't control people. Oh you can, for a time, but there is something within the human spirit that can't be tamed for long. So out they go. 

Then you find you can't really control love either because, of course, to love something is to let go of self. To lay aside your will be done and ask what is the utmost good for the object of my love? Well, that will never do if I am to maintain control in my life, so love is gone too. We will replace that with a cheap imitation. I will "do things" for people, whether they want them or not. And it will be what I want and think they need, and they will be thankful. In fact, they will be indebted. And if my relationship with them is one where they are indebted to me, I am again in control. 
Well. He's gotten his way. He has control. The doors are shut. The windows are locked. No one messes with him, in fact, they often just avoid him. He's king of his own little castle. 

And you know what? He is miserable. Because joy comes from a God who cannot be tamed, and anything that can't be controlled is not allowed inside the castle. His life, that he has worked so hard on bringing under his command, he has found is no longer life at all, but a nothingness that is hauntingly akin to death. There is no fecundity. It's sterile. It's logical. It's expected. It's familiar. Because God has given him control. And from the outside looking in, I see why God is breaking this in me. Because I am beginning to understand that if I am in control of my life, it is no longer life. It is death. If I am in control of my life, my prayers to God to make me more like Him, to bring me blessings, to bring me joy, to bring me character and closer to Him, to show me life and life abundantly, they are not possible. I can have Jesus. I can have God. I can know Him and grow old with Him and one day see face to face the One who will always be my first love. Or I can have my castle, filled with everything I can find that I can control. Which is nothing. And I will have this nothing to keep me company on the days that I look back and wonder why I am not happy. Why I am not fulfilled. Why I controlled my life down to the cereal I ate for breakfast, but I could not control the one thing I wanted most of all, and that was to be found. 

And of course, there Jesus will be, crying away my grief and my confusion and my pain, and He will say "I  told you. I warned you. Child I demonstrated it for you. To gain your life, you must lose it first." 

Let go. Or He'll give you what you ask for, and He'll let you go. And if you think surrender is hard, try looking back on your life and realizing that all you have left is yourself, because that's the control you created.